THE FIRST BLUEBIRDS. 43 



cerulean flash from their backs, or the chestnut 

 warmth of their round breasts. I watched and 

 listened to these birds for more than an hour. 

 They were joyously happy. They flew, they 

 basked in the sunlight, they went to the orchard 

 and peered into a hole in an apple limb in which 

 many a bluebird has probably been hatched ; 

 they hovered all over the cedars, eating their 

 bluish, aromatic fruit ; they perched on the ice 

 at the brink of Stony Brook and drank from 

 the rushing water ; they pecked at the sumac 

 spikes, they sipped melting snow on the slate 

 roof of the freight house ; they swung on the tele- 

 graph wires, and they filled the air with their 

 sweet, simple notes. The station - master said 

 some of them had been seen the Wednesday pre- 

 vious. At last I left them unwillingly, and 

 walked down the track which follows Stony 

 Brook towards Waltham. In the swift current 

 between the ice which projected far out from 

 each shore a muskrat was swimming down 

 stream ; twice he dived and twice he surged 

 along with the cold flood before I passed him. 



